Integrity

I feel careful about approaching this topic. I come to integrity because as I am getting older I find that it is growing more and more important to me. Therefore, I should be able to define it, but it is much more elusive to me too. Integrity seems like pornography to me. By that, I mean, a supreme court justice once said, when he felt compelled to try and define pornography, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” Integrity too, seems like something one can notice sooner than one can define it.  I’m not going to write so much about what it is, because honestly I’m not sure I know, but I am going to try to write about the benefit of its presence.

I notice who touches me. They tend to have it. When it is missing, and/or underdeveloped, I tend to take everything that person says, even if I like it, and agree, with a grain of salt. It’s not quite that I don’t trust them. Even meaning well, I’m not going to rely on them. Integrity is, for me, some kind of navigational device. It’s a funny one. I don’t have a sense, and can only rely on its presence, when I’ve developed it inside myself. My ability to recognize it, in others, depends upon the work I do inside myself to grow and develop it.

I’m not defining what it is, partly out of reverence for it. Integrity, seems to me, to be somewhat mysterious. I can feel it, it is like a kind of presence, a core of some kind, a reassuring solidity, which tells me somebody is home. I like knowing that spending time here, with this person, is going to be a good investment of my precious life-energy.

I also like knowing that even when I lose my balance, which is fairly often, I have enough ballast inside, to keep me from permanently being unbalanced. My integrity saves me from damaging falls, and helps me orient towards the future. This is a great utility, but a hard-earned one. It is important, noticeable, in its presence or absence, it is  essential to aspirations of real achievement, and largely untalked about. Integrity, I guess because it is hard to define, and is so mysterious, doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

No matter how true that last assertion is, integrity is growing like a good cancer, in my aging internal landscape. Life seems to want me to have integrity.  As I age, I’ve grown more aware of my approaching death, and of a desire to live really fully now. Integrity seems to have more to do with the latter. Somehow, the quality and value of my life seems to revolve around whether I am living truly or not. Integrity has to do with me having everything lined up. Its not enough that I have values (like it used to be), now I have to be living them out.

I guess the aging piece is important here.  Somehow, as I’ve grown older, it has become increasingly important to me, to look at my own life, and to bring things into alignment. Values are becoming actions. Relationships are becoming other limbs. Life is becoming miraculous on a more and more detailed level. There is a sense of continuity that calls for a more refined sense of alignment, if you will, integrity.

I had to begin learning about living with some kind of integrity long before I could actually do it. That has been hard. It still is. Refining what I’ve learned about myself, about the incredible difficulty of being human, about the possibility of compassion, keeps me ever vigilant, awake to the whole dance, adjusting to the rhythms of change. My sense of integrity always seems to be suffering from a kind of jet-lag, behind the moment’s need, but there enough to know and be grateful for the lesson of the moment.

Developing something that keeps me in the game hasn’t come easy. The difficulty is like initiatory ordeals. I have scars to show for it, but those scars serve to remind me, that my presence in the game isn’t an accident. I have worked hard to be capable of failing so thoroughly, and being able to learn so well from these miserable but gallant attempts. Gaining ballast is increasingly important to me now. Integrity, no matter how it is defined, allows me to persist, to keep going, and to keep myself oriented toward the mysterious source of being.

I want to die, and believe myself capable of going toward the light. I think I would be too afraid of the light, of encountering the truth of my being, if I haven’t placed enough emphasis upon living integrously. Integrity, that mysterious navigational tool, is my hope of becoming fully what I am capable of being. It hurts trying to live up to it, and it hurts even more living without it.

Integrity baffles me, just as it releases me. I am more of what Life intended me to be, because I am so caught up in trying to live fully. Integrity is a gift that requires constant play.

Play

“One of the results of having lived a regime of regularly scheduled days for almost our entire life is that we can easily lose the spirit of play. Not only do our bodys age, but our spirits can mildew a bit, too. Whether we know it or not, Life has lost some of its possibility of abandon, over the years. More importantly, the sense of play, the quality in us, that really keeps us young, after years of having been largely ignored, has been sapped of its electric edge. It may take awhile to retrieve it. But retrieve it we must if we are to let age have free rein in us.

Age is for the revival of the spirit. Age is meant to allow us to play — with ideas, with projects, with friends, with life.”— Joan Chittister from The Gift of Years.

There is a possibility that resides in old age, like never before. Play. The innocence and wonder of childhood flares up again. Old eyes, hearts and spirits experience the world with the same kind of creative reverence and incandescent wonder that graces the very young.

In so doing, the old one’s experience aids Creation. Newness burns brighter, near the end, where an educated experienced light shines forth. Slowly elders, the reborn old, are coming to realize that life still surges in their blood, and that the magnificent miracle has not forsaken them.

Maybe this culture has, mistakenly, but Life hasn’t. Strangely, now at this seemingly broken hour, it calls out of us our true uniqueness, and guides us toward discovering our belonging. The elderly are seedpods, they hold something that cannot be gotten to without the heartbreak and surprise of life-experience. They aren’t the used up ones, instead they are the well-used ones. To release the wisdom, and creative energy of ripeness, inherent in the lives of the old, Nature has provided fun, laughter, comraderie and play.

Play equals fun, and fun equals creative engagement, and that enlivens everything it touches. In fact, there is a continuum that extends from Creation to human play. What is happening at the largest scale we can barely imagine, is also happening locally, when the attitude of play breaks out in someone’s laughing delight. Getting older brings this into perspective. What once belonged only in childhood, suddenly is a gift that graces even the doddering. Some fun takes a lifetime to unfold!

Play isn’t just fun, it is educative.  Creation dances with energy, so do we. Creation plays with form, so do we. Creation explores the non-obvious, ill informed, irrational missteps, so do we. All along we learn, so does the force that animates us. It could be that one of humanity’s highest art forms is play, a creative imaginative engagement with what is. The active edge of the expanding Universe might be right here, in the spirits of those living right now within the dilemmas of Creation, and playing their hearts out.

Play is kind of a secret, a secret that doesn’t comport with our puritanical heritage, so it has kind of a bad name. The idea of it is much worse than the experience. So it, like old folks, is kind of pushed into the shadows. They are immigrants, still looking for a way to be taken in, still looking for the kind of recognition that frees their gifts. They are finding each other, there in the shadows, and something unforeseen is emerging, a new more playful way of being grey.

This is a development that has Evolution buzzing. Like all truly good things, this development is full of paradox. The most frivolous and nonsensical of pursuits contain some of the most mysterious and binding meaning. What appears, and must be held, as an unproductive act, produces the unexpected. The old are suddenly fountains of youth. Creation doesn’t rest, it doesn’t even pause to celebrate its achievements, but from this moment in time, play and ageing are wonderful building blocks for a future worth having

Impact

There is a part of being human that I’ve always found difficult. I hope that it doesn’t have to always be this way, this hard, but it always has been, and I want to try and do something about it. I’m afraid though. This is one of those things that requires me to ask for help. If that isn’t difficult enough, I know to get at this, in a real way, I have to ask for help from you, the very people my blindness impacts the most.

I can’t help it. I’m only human. That is not only my overused excuse, but it happens to be true.  Addressing this issue is probably going to take all the compassion I can muster, and all you can muster too. Being human means I generate impacts (often hurtful) that I’m not aware of. I am clumsy and blind, and I don’t know know it as much as I need to. Because all of this is so, I need you, and I know you need me. I would like to believe we could deal with the impacts we necessarily have upon, and with, each other.

I am one of, what my friend Jim calls, the “not-sees.” I don’t see some things very well.  What happens is that I do a lot of damage — I’m like the proverbial bull in the china shop — because I’m looking somewhere else, or I’m just unable to see all of the consequences of my actions.

I’ve done a lot of therapy, hell, I’ve been a therapist for a long time. Amongst the many things I did in both those roles, has been operate by the belief that I (one) could stop bumping into, and hurting (and sometimes being hurt by), people. I have been wrong about that. This is another example, though pretty ordinary, of how blind I can be.

Lately, I’ve come to see that my blindness is part of being human. I can see, only partly at best. That awareness has made it easier for me to apologize, but does nothing to help me cause less harm. Now my hope rests upon the company I keep. I know I’m going to bump into them from time to time —I’m fond of saying community is a contact sport — but it seldom goes easily when I do. I’m not pretending I’m not blind —I’m not a climate change denier (claiming we humans have no effect on the world) — in fact, I’m too aware that I do, and it leaves me feeling a regret I have a hard time getting past.

So my basic self-image right now contains an awareness that I am perpetually hurtful to the one’s I say I love. Since I say I love community that poses a real challenge to me. I want to do more than just feel bad about it. So, I’ve come to asking for your help. I know if I could just forgive everyone I wouldn’t have to feel this way, but I don’t want to issue a blanket pardon, that doesn’t adequately address the harm in the world that I (and others) seem to be a part of.

I realize I can’t make all of the hurt go away. I know that pain is sometimes the way Mystery gets in, but it seems that there is more hurt in the world than necessary. I’d like to be part of that changing some.  And, I’m just foolish enough, or immature enough, to think that it can be different, for me, and for all of us. But, I’m currently at the place where I can’t imagine that hurting, the hurting I’m responsible for, being addressed without your help.

I keep thinking about a more active form of forgiveness, one that is more immediate, personal, and natural. My imagination though runs to climate change. Before us, within our experience, there is plenty of evidence of our (we humans) impact upon Earth. Alongside that impact, I want to place the impact we have upon one another. Just as the climate is changing in response to our actions, so is the world of social relations being shaped by our impact upon one another.

I know I can’t help impacting you. I know you can’t help impacting me. But, I don’t live in a world where that is just a random coincidence anymore. I live in a world where I am awash in connection. I know there is little that is actually random about it. Yet, I still live like my social impacts are merely farts in the wind. That no longer seems right.

I need your help to live otherwise. Let’s talk about it. Let’s interact like our contact, our incidental impacts upon each other, are really gifts, gifts that indicate how truly connected we are. I want to celebrate the new awareness that is coming to me later here in life, and I can’t do it without playmates, without others who will share with me the difficult process of dealing anew with my (our) blind ignorance.

I don’t like to know that I am (despite my best efforts) overbearing, controlling, and think too much of myself. I don’t react well to finding out either. But, I can do better. I imagine that if I wasn’t feeling so alone, and so prone, in my isolation, to all kinds of bad feelings, that maybe I could handle knowing more about myself. I also imagine that if I knew I was deeply connected and wanted here, then I could celebrate the little things, the places where we intersect (despite, and even sometimes because of my intransigence).

Connecting asks this of me. I don’t think, despite all my self-reliant alarms, that I can pull this off alone. This is one of those places where I can’t help saying (thank God my disability has forced me into this ability), I need your help.

Please help me! I (words that are taboo in our social reality) need your hand. And, I have reason to suspect, you need mine. Let’s make the most out of our impacts upon each other!

You’re Perfect The Way You Are

There is a brief snippet of a story that introduced me to the subject I want to reflect on here. I was sitting in my men’s group many years ago when one of the men recounted this portion of the story. It seems a Zen Master was addressing his students, and he said, “You are perfect as you are” and “you could use a little improvement.” Hearing that story kicked me into a level of self-reflection that continues to this day. I have evolved since that time and so has my take on this paradox. Today, in this writing I hope to find out more about this on-going evolution. Bear with me, because I want this exploration to be more than merely an exercise in narcissism, I am hoping to touch what is universal about the task of loving oneself.

When I first heard this story I realized I had spent most of my life being on the “you could use a little improvement” side of things. I was a growth junkie. I had devoted myself to rooting out all of the ways I have holding myself, or anyone, hostage to my lack of development. Always, I was a work in progress. I still am. This wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t affect everything around me. At first, I was just aware of how it was a way I maintained a kind of perpetually inadequate self-image. Now, I’ve come to see it is more pervasive than that.

The remedy then was to shift my focus from “needing improvement” to “perfection as you are.” This provided an essential antidote. I was a lot easier on my self and slowly even developed more self-compassion. I remembered the story and maintained a kind of perspective on my self. My attitude towards me changed some. I say some because I have come back around to this little piece of wisdom and found myself fed anew by it. It turns out my happiness, and how I regard and treat others, is effected by how I hold the paradox alluded to by this little story. Here’s what I mean.

Until now, I have been a one-sided man. I haven’t had much capacity to hold paradox. As a result, even though I could relate to how this little story reminded me of the necessity of balance, I didn’t really have the capacity for paradoxical awareness, the ability to hold both sides. I got better, but I also got more sophisticated, and developed another thing to work on. I now, could strive for a new level of realization, and think myself honorable, while perpetuating my feeling of inadequacy. I was still a work-in-progress, I told myself, who wasn’t a work-in-progress, and that is true, but that belief only deepened my self-delusion. I knew I contained imperfections, which made it hard for me to settle down, and believe I was perfect as I was.

Lately, I’ve had a greater opportunity to be happy. The benefits of aging are setting in. Things like, more self-possession, less emotional reactivity, more interest in others, and a greater sense of connection with all of Creation, have altered my life. I’m ripening into somebody I’ve always wanted to be, but I still keep myself, and others, on edge, because I don’t hold the whole paradox fully yet. Recently, I became aware again, of how easily I let go of being “perfect as [I] am.”

I realized that my happiness hinges upon my developing, but still insufficient, ability to be “perfect” and to need “a little improvement.” Not only that, but I realize that holding myself hostage to my way of being one-sided, not only meant I couldn’t be happy with myself, but I couldn’t be happy with anyone else either. I have been a therapist, family counselor, community-builder and spiritual being, and always I relied on my ability to sense what was wrong with a situation. I have been good, and have learned how to promote growth. But, because of my one-sidedness, I have also promoted inadequacy and reliance on growth.

Now, I am becoming more capable of something I could only dream of before. Instead of seeing everything in terms of either/or, I am much more capable of both/and awareness. Thanks to the reminder of my friend Xan, I know I haven’t developed this capacity through my own efforts, instead it has been grown through me, by Life. I am ripening into a more complex awareness, that lets me see that I (like everyone else) am like Creation. Creation is perfect like it is, and it has the remarkable capacity to extend its perfection into improving/evolving.

As a self-identified change agent, I’ve come to a deeper level of this realization, that there is a wholeness at play, and that my best efforts only assist what is already underway. The best move I can make is to stay out of the way, and to dance happily in celebration of what is happening. Under these conditions, my happiness turns into happiness with others. Wow! What a good feeling follows!

Balance

Since I had the stroke, and suffered brain damage, I’ve had no balance. I lack the part of the brain that handles proprioceptive signals. So, I don’t know where I am in space. I’ve already written, in a past Slow Lane, how I’ve compensated by leaning on community, and letting others balance me. By and large this has worked — with a little learning on my part. As a result, I have a great appreciation for what we can do for each other. Today, I’m thinking of balance again, not so much about it, as about the tensions I always feel unseating me. These tensions assail me as I reach for a new temporary balance point. That’s what I want to focus upon, the dynamic tensions, the one’s that keep me poised on edge, balanced precariously, while reaching further.

Those in the academic world might call these stresses, dialectical tensions. To me, however, they are part of the complications that make relating so interesting. I am finding, as I get older (I’ll bet you are too), that keeping my relationships vital and meaningful occupies me fully.

I like relationship challenges, though I often find myself bemused, confused, humbled and stretched by forces I’m only now beginning to grasp. Balance in this realm is something more than physical. I am coming to rely on the sometimes contradicting, sometimes complementary, always paradoxical, forces at play.  Balance here is dynamic. These forces, the tensions that guide me now, keep pushing me into a zone of paradox. Here I seem to be growing, and I’m discovering that these same forces are re-balancing me.

I’m talking about relationship forces (or, tensions) that knock me off-balance for the sake of some greater, more functional, balance. Things like growth and harmony, closeness and intimacy, and completeness and wholeness. If you think about it, each can be complementary, and each can be in conflict with the other. It seems that they are great examples of how opposites attract, constellate, conflict with, and rely on each other.

Frankly, when I was younger, and less amenable to what is, I often got tired and dismayed by being buffeted around so much by these forces. I still do sometimes, but now, I know, they are growing me. I’ve learned that losing control, sometimes wisely surrendering, and being thrown ass over teakettle, frequently means that I discover balance where I wouldn’t believe it existed.

I’m still learning. There seems to be a way of immersing myself in the flows that these tensions generate, which introduces me to a zone of paradox. Suddenly, there is harmonious growth, intimate closeness, and temporarily complete wholeness. I don’t live there and cannot willfully go there, but sometimes I get taken there anyway — into this strange world where things morph into each other. I’ve come to believe that I have a greater chance of acquiring access, to the insights and capabilities of this state, if I could just make better friends with the tensions I notice around me. That has been easier said than done. Nature doesn’t seem to care, or it cares differently, because these tensions accost me, whether I’m ready to learn and willing, or not.

The tension that seems to exist between harmony and growth regulates my relationship life. These energies carry many things. Familiarity, comfort and aliveness, depend upon the right mix. Too much growth can make a place hot and irritating. Too much harmony can be stultifying — too cool. Without the right mix of intimacy and closeness, someone can feel unloved and uncomfortable. Similarly, being contented with self, or primarily chasing after self-growth, can throw one into self-distrust, rebounding against everyone. So, a lot is at stake, and the balance point is not easy to reach, or obvious.

These tensions bedevil me. They render my life perpetually off-balance, yet miraculously they also, if I can tolerate their discomfort, re-balance me. I have lived with them long enough now to trust that they will deliver me, not only to a new balance-point, but to a new paradoxical awareness. These tensions are connected, meaningful, and designed to bring me closer to my true nature. What I seem to be discovering is more than a new balance-point. Instead I find a more balanced awareness. Somehow, these delicate and subversive tensions transport and sensitize me. The struggle for balance they provoke becomes something else — a strange apprehension that Life is more than it seems.

The Tension

I want to spend some time facing one of the most vexing realities I’m confronted with. I haven’t really tried facing this dilemma head on before. It drew my attention recently, and appearing on my radar screen, I began to think this is a phenomenon I run into all the time, and I haven’t really looked at it. Now, I’m stopping to do so. And I’m encountering the reality that what I face now has been ruling me for a long time. I am filled with dread. I don’t want to encounter what I cannot handle, but neither do I want to be ruled by what I fear.

I’ve been feeling a kind of troublesome tension that wracks my awareness and limits me. I’m talking about my awareness of the terminal condition of this world. I know how bad it is. And, I have difficulty knowing. I feel like I should do something right now, and I feel guilty because whatever I would do is not enough. I cannot put this heartache to rest. I’m damned if I do (respond) and damned if I don’t (become passive and guilty).

I feel like I am caught in an avalanche. I should try to survive. I am overwhelmed by the power of what I’m involved in. Survival is not really my call. But neither is just giving in. I vacillate between these two poles, feeling trapped and distorted by my awareness, that this is the reality I’m in. I cannot conceive of a way to make a difference, nor can I do nothing for very long. I ‘m never get off the hook. For a while I can convince myself of a change, then little by little, I realize that change doesn’t really change anything. I live with a certain anxiety that this house of cards is already coming down.

Sometimes I think it should, that I should help it, that my contribution is to add weight to this crumbling structure, to help it fall. But then I just as quickly fear the possibility. I don’t want the human experiment to end on my watch. I feel intensely disloyal.

I don’t really have a place to stand. I’m just uneasy. Anything I do is contaminated by my awareness. Not doing anything, or enough, is equally unsatisfying. I am literally torn apart, if I let myself know what I already know.

I carry this burden. Who doesn’t? I don’t think this just troubles those who are awake, it seems probable to me, that I suffer an awareness, that even when it is not consciously felt, all humanity bears.

I live with an impossible recognition. The nightmare goes on, and if one pays attention, it gets more and more horrifying. Still, I live within it. I can’t help but think about what I might be like if I didn’t have to bear this form of gravity, if, somehow, I wasn’t caught up in these times. Still, I am.

I can feel this weight every time I move. I can feel it when I am still, too. To be honest, it distorts everything I do. I don’t want it to, but it does. This is my environment now. I live with the day-to-day possibility of collapse. All of my interactions are defined, to some extent, by the reality of demise. I don’t really know what kind of human this makes me? I just know that living seems to bear this form of torment.

So it seems to me that modern life contains a kind of anxious tension that our ancestors may have never known. Do you think they could have imagined a time when humans had reason to not trust each other, because we know now how culpable we all are?

I’m discovering something though. In the midst of all this difficult mess, I am finding that I trust more those who are not pretending that crisis isn’t looming. I tend to listen harder to those who let themselves feel the mess we are in. I don’t mean the one’s who are just horrified (and want to do something), but those who are intent upon living within the truth of this world. I tend to listen to, and respect, those who’s hearts are broken by this shattered world, and have the temerity to live, relate, love, and exist torn apart. Their guts hang out, like mine, and I am encouraged.

Strangely, there seems to be nothing so humbling and enlivening as acceptance. The world is crumbling. For some reason this is coaxing the best and worst out of our species. I chose to look at the best. I hope that serves evolution, because it gives me hope. It may be that it takes such extreme conditions to evoke an awareness that can bear a fatal truth. If it does, then I am glad I get to be on the scene, for this moment in our species life.

Trust

I have trust issues, a lot of them. They seem to pop up everywhere I am in contact with other people. I haven’t really talked about this much. But, I know that these issues color my social world. What’s worse, and makes it much harder, is the fact that I’m not alone.

There seems to be trust issues everywhere. I would guess you probably have some too. So, I’m going to try to explore my trust issues. While that is happening I’m making a request of you. Identify what might be your own trust issues. I don’t know what you might want to do with them, but realize, as I am, that social reality, what’s possible between human beings, is limited and defined by them.

I have trust issues. I’ve been hurt by other human beings. I’ve hurt myself with them. In fact, social reality teems with hurtful mistrust. Everywhere I go, I seem to meet distrust, my own or somebody else’s. The level of social distrust is so high that being a gun totin’ society seems to make sense. I don’t like it, but I understand it. I live in a world where distrust is ubiquitous. The water I swim in, the connections I share in, seems to be contaminated by mistrust. Social reality contains more distrust than I can handle.

I’ve grown up in this world, and I’ve almost never heard this dimension of social life adequately addressed. I’ve been exposed to the golden rule and lots of moral aphorisms that seem to apply, but they don’t really get down to how to deal with this part of social reality. I’ve heard a kind of economic analysis. The banks won’t lend, small businesses won’t hire, capital won’t flow, if there is sufficient distrust. It appears that the economy is broken, because trust is in short supply. I could go on to the housing and labor markets, or point at the Congress, or political gridlock, or how litigious we are. I have this terrible feeling that even the environment is suffering from our lack of trust.

And, I have trust issues. I’ve tried to learn how to take care of myself. This has been hard to learn. As I have grown older I have gotten better at it. I eventually shifted my gaze from others (my distrust of them) to myself (my distrust of me). Growing more solid with, and truly befriending myself, has been difficult, but this has reduced some of the distrust in my world. Learning all that trusting myself entailed, has made a big difference. Still there is plenty of mistrust. I keep noticing it, which is in part, how I know I still have trust issues.

Learning to trust myself has, in part, to do with noticing the level of distrust inherent in every social system I participate in. I try to notice and respond according to my values. Instead, of letting the level of ambient distrust determine how I act. In some ways this is really good, it gives me more autonomy, and I am able to be more myself, but it also attracts the notice of others, who now distrust me (thinking I want to control them). Usually, this kind of attention is run by fear, and isn’t typically very friendly (see my last Slow Lane piece about the prejudice against leadership). Sometimes any move can be seen as threatening.

I’m not dealing with this very well. That’s what I mean by saying I have trust issues. I don’t trust adequately those who don’t trust me. It isn’t enough to trust myself, to know that I have good intentions. In fact, that seems to just inflame things. My freedom, and the quality of the interaction, depends upon me, but I’m not sure how? I can’t ignore the distrust aimed at me. That would be disrespectful, and avoids the possibility that I might be doing something that warrants distrust. I also know better than take it all personally. I have learned that lesson the hard way. But, what do I do?

I don’t really have a satisfying solution. Learning to trust myself makes many trust issues more soluble, but that has only earned me more challenging trust issues. Right now, I have the possibility of learning. I’m grateful for that. It may be learning while under fire, but I’m still learning, and it just might be I need to learn how to deal with the distrust that comes toward me firing. I can see that possibility. People have been so hurt by other people. It’s sad. I know that I have hurt my share. Probably, at some point; I have been the one who fired first and asked questions later. Maybe, I still am.

I have trust issues. In some ways, I’m not surprised. I am a human being; I live in a sea of frothing relationships. I’m not responsible for all of them, but they all affect me. The waves wash into, and sometimes over me. To stay afloat, to be me fully (whatever that is), I’ve got to learn how to be distrust-worthy. Can I stay me, respectfully, even when another sees me totally from their perspective? Or, doesn’t see me at all?

Time only will tell. In the meantime I have trust issues. I guess I’m glad I do. Having them suggests to me that I’m still on the playground, playing, trying to figure out how to make friends, looking for playmates, and discovering a little more about this challenging thing called being human. Probably, not being so good at it, insures that I have plenty of possible playmates.

A Prejudice Against Leadership

A tension is running through me. It seems to make a sound. That sound is growing louder. It is making me uncomfortable and anxious. I want to write about it, to explore what it is, but I feel more nervous as I get closer to it. That is usually a sign of how much ambivalence I feel. I know the tension says something about me, and I’m not sure I want to find out what. I am really nervous about letting this part of my experience be seen. I will go ahead, because I am that kind of fool, but I do so knowing that I have mixed feelings about what I am looking at. I am aware of how much prejudice against leadership I feel, and I am becoming aware of what that says about me.

It is deep in my bones. If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.  I grew up, in some ways, as one who learned to rely on myself. Some of my beauty is related to how much responsibility I have taken for myself. I like who I have become. All of this is true. It is only recently that I finally, after years of misdirection and suffering, came into my own. I have learned how to take care of myself. Now, I’m looking at how this hard won achievement is incomplete. I don’t want to relinquish and bow down to anyone. In so doing, I am seeing, I am unwilling to take responsibility for my deeply human partialness.

I want to be free of leaders, teachers, therapists, parents and would-be priests. I don’t want anyone standing between me, and the Great Mystery. I don’t like feeling small, undeveloped, inadequate, or somehow stupid and blind. When anyone has the audacity to presume they know or experience something more thoroughly than I, I usually don’t believe them, don’t trust them, and quickly dismiss them. I do kill them, but non-violently. They are still dead to me.

All of this, the indiscriminant killing, is my way of protecting myself against the unscrupulous charlatans out there, who would prey on my desire to be fully human. No body is going to take advantage of my developmental desire, my longing for wholeness. No more, will I hope that others will lead me to where I know I need to go. I know that is the only way one can go.

Oh but, I’m weary. So tired that I’m vulnerable. So tired that I make mistakes So tired that sometimes I wish there were someone else who could help me carry my desire a step further. But, if anyone comes close and offers in any way, I am deeply suspicious. They better be careful.  I am likely to turn on them. I want a teacher but he, or she, better not try to teach me anything. On the other hand, what good is a teacher who doesn’t? The truth is, I’m not very tolerant of either. I want to be fed, but primarily, only in my way.

I know this is true about me. I don’t like admitting it. I am so unenlightened, so human, so ordinary. I only admit it now to myself because I want to deal better with the prejudice I face each time I care enough to try to take on a leadership role. I’m also tired of being shot at, disparaged, reduced and otherwise mistreated. Trying to make a difference, and caring about those around me, is only partly vain, sometimes it is genuine. I can be human in that way too. But, I’m often wary of it.  I don’t like being the object of suspicion.

I know I have no real right to assume any role of leadership as long as I harbor the will to disregard others who are genuinely trying to help me along the way. I know I have no right to complain about being shot at as long as I hold a gun in my hand. I know I don’t handle it well, being the object of suspicion. It is precisely because I haven’t given up protecting myself in this way. I don’t want to go on and become the caring elder. Or, the leader, I could be. I am torn open. When it means letting go of protecting myself in this old way. Can I let myself learn from, rely upon, and trust an other?

I don’t have any say about the prejudice against leadership in the world. I will just have to learn to deal with it. I know I can start dealing with it better, if I am willing to begin right here in my heart. If I am on a course that will carry me ultimately into a real elderhood then I’ve got to trust myself enough that I won’t kill off the food bearers who are trying to help me along the way. Also, I know, I can’t really become one of them until I can admit their existence into my heart.

The journey toward elderhood has so many twists and turns to it. I keep meeting myself on this road. Strangely, I come in many forms yet I still have to deal with the same old one — me — if I’m going to make further progress along the way.

I notice too, that alongside the baggage of my old ways, the self I know, is a stranger, laughing, and accompanying me. I hope you are noticing something like him, or her, too.

Precocious

I used to joke, about being an elder. “Chronologically I’m an infant elder, but experientially I’m precocious.” I still say it sometimes, because it still feels true. But now, when I say it, I’m not joking, and I’m not exactly sure how I feel about being this way. I looked up the word precocious to see what it meant, and if I was using the word right. The word refers to someone who is “ahead of their time.” I don’t know how this applies to a senior citizen, but it does seem like there is a way that I seem to be ahead of my own development. I don’t actually know how to write, or even think about that, but I feel like I have to try. I don’t exactly know why. I tend to think it is presumptuous. It seems to me to be more than a little precocious to write about being precocious.

Officially someone who is precocious is supposed to be more developed than their age. I guess that is true of me. I don’t think it is something I sought out, or feel like I can take any credit for. Somehow the Great Mystery deemed that I had to go through a long period of being perched on death’s doorstep, so I could be brought back, through no efforts I was capable of, with a form of consciousness that reminds me daily how powerless I am in life. If I am really in any way precocious it is because I know this life is not my life, but Life’s life. That isn’t the kind of knowing anyone seeks, especially if it means being held close to death.

I sometimes think being precocious, in the way I seem to be, is a gift. I get to feel a lot of things. Sometimes I can make this awareness useful. I get inspired and just feel awe. At other times I think of this awareness as a curse. I have to feel things I would rather not. I can’t always make useful what besieges me. I feel happy when I am able to serve my community through this awareness. At other times I just feel grief, because I know no way to digest, and make palatable, what assails me. I alternately feel deeply embedded in the whole, and desperately alone, and drowning in an immense emptiness.  So far, it looks like both are real, they seem to coexist, and I have to travel through them.

Being precocious is not my doing. I know it. Life made me this way. I remember telling the doctor I had at Stanford, that I always wanted to be special, but when he told me that they (the doctors) had never seen a condition like mine, and didn’t know how to treat me, then I realized I was special in away I had never anticipated. I feel the same way now. I am precocious not the way I want, but in some way that Life wants.

I am simultaneously thrilled to be called in this way and horrified that it means in some way that I am a freak — a freak of nature. Being disabled is freakish enough, but being strangely enabled is really freaky. I am not writing these words, doing this exploration, to complain.  I’m doing it to genuinely wonder what my being is doing here, how does it serve that I am like this? I fear that I am a freak, some natural anomaly, but secretly I think that actually I am the exception that proves the point. I believe the feelings that assail me, feelings of incredible connection, are part of what it means to be fully human. I believe that a kind of emotional intelligence about ourselves, and each other, is part of our natural inheritance. I think I am twisted in this way to serve to remind us all of this aspect of who we are. In that sense, I’m not an anomaly, only a reminder.

Precociousness then is a memory aid. For a time, some people have forgotten what they are capable of.  The arc of human development includes an emotional awareness of the fact that we exist because something, something big and mysterious, has employed Life to make sure we exist. I’m grateful that I get to know this much, I tend to think the crazy reality we live in has lulled us to sleep, to fearfully forget what we already know.

I don’t know what anyone’s purpose is for being here. But, I do know that there is a purpose —a scouting mission to the edge — and that each life is precious, because that mystery is embedded in it. Being precocious is a tolerable inconvenience compared to that kind of awareness.

I founder, in a very human way, under the weight of what is being asked of me. I live in constant admiration of how others have shouldered their own weights, and I take hope that I can handle mine, because others let me see what they struggle with. If I am precocious its only to remind us all that we have passed this way before —it is within us, to know why we are here.

Social Coercion

A friend of mine, a co-host on our radio show, had no more than uttered these words “social coercion”, when the part of me that is looking for possible Slow Lane material started up. I don’t know exactly why these words agitated me so. I’m hoping to find out as I reflect upon what got stirred within me. All I know for sure is that I could smell something that was more complex than it seemed. I think I gravitated to it much like the salmon is drawn back to its spawning place.

Social coercion. That sounds so much like being bullied by the masses. I guess for some it is. It implies that actions are the result of others. This is an anti-democratic nightmare. Somebody manipulates others to have their will. It is no wonder that groups are not trustworthy. The social arena is full of this harmful possibility. People worry because social coercion is everywhere; from advertising, political spin, religious proselytizing and all forms of fixing, healing and converting. The world of social connection is full of it. 

There is a necessary evil that haunts us as a social animal (social coercion), so much so that I think we would rather demonize it than learn to deal with it. In other words, social coercion is a natural phenomenon in a world of connection. Throwing it out, or acting surprised and intolerant of it, would be like throwing the baby out with the bath water. I don’t think my friend was doing anything like this when he mentioned social coercion, but my antenna went wild, because we live in such a fragmented culture, and there is so much distrust around, that I could believe someone might argue that if we could put an end to social coercion we might have a saner more humane world.

As you probably can tell, I think social coercion is one form of that which binds each of us to the other. Relationship necessarily involves enough pushing and shoving so that all parties can learn, if they want to, how to take care of themselves. Relationship, if it is the real deal, involves realities colliding; a certain amount of jousting to find out what is possible. If coercion, taking one’s own position and advocating for it, was looked at a path to social hell, then we as a species would be so cut-off, and so isolated that we could no longer consider ourselves to be social animals.

Maybe this isn’t common knowledge, or it isn’t something people actually grasp, but each of us lives in a bubble we call reality. This bubble is composed of everything we see and believe in. The world we live in is partially composed of the bubble (worldview) we apply to it. From the world we create with our bubbles comes our sense of self. The science of human development reveals that maturation involves giving up one bubble (the partial worldview), and sense of self you have, for a more complex, more complete bubble (another less-partial worldview), and a more capable, functional self. The great spiritual practices are based upon the same recognition. Reality becomes more real, more as it is, as we give up our insistences that it conform to our constructs. Life, more or less, coerces us out of blindness into the light.

People give up their bubbles for various reasons, sometimes it’s voluntary, sometimes it’s not. In the meantime all of these bubbles coexist and press on each other. Social reality is made up of multiple coexisting bubbles, upon which, there are also multiple identities — selves trying to live up to their worldviews. To be true to oneself in this kind of tumultuous free for all social space is hard. And, this hardship, plus exposure to all of these partial worldviews, is just what humans need to grow and become what they are capable of being. The tumult, including what can be considered social coercion, tempers us, and confers upon us the choices we must make to become ourselves.

Social coercion is a complex phenomenon. I’d like to do away with some forms of it (for example gang or fraternity hazing rites) but I’m concerned that that would weaken our social immune system and leave us even more vulnerable to toxic worldviews. I think that social coercion begs not to be stopped, but to be out grown. The more solid I am, the more confident I am in my own worldview (bubble), the less I worry about coercion. Paradoxically, this strength or confidence, comes from regularly and completely rubbing shoulders with this sea of others who hold differing viewpoints. The most useful response to social coercion is through exposure to social coercion.

I am more worried about the impulse to limit the pressures of social coercion, than I am concerned about social coercion. I know a lot of damage has been done, especially to voiceless minorities, but I don’t want us (humanity) to denature ourselves (each other) rather than grow ourselves. Social coercion is the water we learn to be ourselves in; it is the complex environment that coaxes out of us our own nuances.

While I’m dwelling on this topic I just have to say that one of the most basic and virulent forms of social coercion is the misuse of the word “we.” We is a powerful word. It can refer to the existence of the collective, the community of connection, that always exists, or it can be used as the worst form of inclusiveness that paradoxically excludes differences. “We” has been a generalization that has led to genocide, slavery and many forms of extreme prejudice. It behooves us all to pay attention to how the word is used by each of us. It is an indicator of what kind of bubble any of us lives in.

I think it better not to think so much in terms of social coercion, but to think more in terms of social diversity.

Seeing and Being Seen

There is an antidote to the plague of separation that seems to assail everyone in western industrial culture. Isolation is optional, not so much a product of having the invisibility cloak (see an earlier Slow Lane) thrown over one, as much as a choice to be seen. Visibility, and social isolation, are aided and abetted by decisions we ourselves make, by developmental conditions we foster, as we assume or avoid responsibility for ourselves. Isolation is as much self-imposed as it is a product of the culture we live in. Nobody is really a victim of a society caught-up in individualism. Responsibility for separation, for social isolation, for depressive ennui, is personal: resting upon how well one sees and allows themselves to be seen. Here’s what I mean.

If it is true that community conveys a personal sense of connection, which I think it does, then being known, which is how a personal sense of connection evolves, is a matter of being seen, and I would stipulate, of seeing. The bonding that is the hallmark of communal intimacy is composed of the same ingredients in a lower intensity, than those that determine social isolation and separation. By this I mean, that seeing and being seen are two of the common ingredients that determine how well we are known. So what? Why does that matter? It doesn’t, unless we want to evolve socially. The future of our kind might depend upon an increasing ability to see and be seen.

Seeing is in part a product of personal development. It is more than simply not being caught in the social trance that puts blinders on most of us. Being seen is a personal responsibility. It is more than a product of other’s blindness; it is a willingness to be transparent. Both of them take development, time to ripen, and enormous responsibility for self and other. They are the by-product benefits of community and solitude.

Seeing evolves. Every step along the arc of development involves beholding a larger, more complex and more complete picture. It literally takes a while for the eyes to adjust. What happens is that the eyes adjust to a more nuanced world and who we are, gets to be discovered as more nuanced too. Others become more vivid. Seeing becomes, the world changes, and what one may not want to see grows visible. Life gets livelier, wilder and more mysterious. Uncertainty flowers.

This all happens whether one likes it or not, and it all asks each of us if we are going to be part of the world we see? Or, if we are going to shut our eyes and imagine we are in another world that we believe we can handle? The choice is ours. But the implications go far beyond us. That is the hell, the communal responsibility, which often makes us chose blindness, and contributes to an ethos of not seeing and separation. Seeing stops when each of us chooses how much we are willing to see.

My family and I used to have a joke, we were seasick because we saw too much. The joke, of course was on us, because our actual sickness, how separated we felt, was our unwillingness to see what lay before and within us. So much was left unseen, including whole aspects of ourselves, and each other.

This is a good place to segue into the responsibility each of us has for being seen. It’s evident now that being seen has an inner component as well as an external one. If we are refusing to see in some way, then we are unlikely to see ourselves very accurately, and unable to make ourselves accurately known. Our chosen blindness contributes to the  social blindness around us, and insures the invisibility of lots of the world. It also disables us

Freedom, the chance to be oneself, the greater chance to discover one’s true nature, to know how connected one is, to even know something of that “larger something” one is connected with, and defined by, rests completely in the frightening capacity to make oneself seen. When one lets go of holding oneself hostage, then one arrives fully in the world, becoming visible. Such availability exposes one to the myopia of others. Being available to be seen can be painful and disappointing, but these are the conditions that make being seen possible. Freedom to be oneself comes with the sometimes painful responsibility of being scrutinized. 

Being seen is a choice. It is a form of exposure that populates the world with diversity and insures that real connection can take place. Community, which provides the prospect of truly being known, thrives on this kind of self-exposure. This choice isn’t the standard cultural activity, it is a preciously rare form of social activism. Choosing to be seen, standing out, is a courageous choice, especially when one actually sees the complexity of this world. Community is an antidote, a balm in an avalanche of  separation, but one that can only offer being known, to the degree of seeing and being seen, that is being practiced.

Admiration

A few weeks ago I was sitting in a circle contemplating an upcoming meeting with some young people. An elder in the circle commented that our job as elders had to include admiring the young. In addition to helping me better prepare for meeting this young couple, these words, started me thinking.  My thoughts have, as they always do, run toward community. It occurred to me that everyone needs to be admired, and that admiration could be one of the greatest gifts we can give to each other. These thoughts unlocked a door for me, and they are taking me into a new relationship with myself, and others. I hope, with these words, to share a little of that with you.

Not long ago I had an experience I didn’t know how to talk about. I found myself in a room full of dying people. These people didn’t have obvious illnesses, or even much real-time awareness of dying, but they all were on the same trajectory towards death. I was vividly aware that each was a dying human, that each was passing very quickly, and that I couldn’t do much about it. I felt vulnerable, helpless and strangely touched. As long as that moment lasted I could feel my love and appreciation for the uniqueness of each of them. I knew how grateful I was to be exposed to them.

The vividness with which I experienced the impending deaths of my friends has brought each of their qualities into my awareness. Noticing how quickly we are all passing has delivered me to a realization of how precious and unique each of us is. I more directly experienced the passion and heartache that underlies each life, and I could appreciate the personal, heroic struggle of each, as they chose to be human in their own way. I could feel how enriched my life is because each of them touched me, on their way into the mysterious darkness of death. I found myself smitten by the magnitude of our humble lives, awed and grateful, enlivened and trembling.

I couldn’t talk about the vividness of this experience, because it left me too raw, and too uncertain about speaking to the dying about dying. I still feel shaken about entering the land of the dying. I am noticing, while I am here, that I appreciate more the efforts that many are making to be as alive as possible as they pass from this earth. I am drawn to those who have been beaten, and are still magnificent, they give their life-energy fully, and they hearten me. I am filled with real, not manufactured, admiration.

I have been dwelling with this new, death-aided, admiration, since I have been initiated into the world of the dying. Paradoxically, I feel more alive, connected, and appreciative. I don’t take my friends for granted any more; they have become miracles I am blessed to be around. Each of them reveals to me something of the courage that being human requires. Each of them reminds me of how much profusion and diversity is in Creation.

Along with a more vivid relationship with the actuality of death has come a greater admiration for the living. And, this has lead to a greater desire on my part to let my fellow community members know how precious they are to me, and how well I see them. It seems to me, that perhaps the greatest gift I can give to another human being is to show them how well they are seen and appreciated. Community bonds grow with such acknowledgement

I have wondered how I might best serve my community. Now, I think I know. If I can fully live in the land of the dying, I can feel the courage and passion that goes into living out the part of Creation that is an expression of our vulnerable existence. I benefit by knowing the truth of this life: that it ends, and I get to see the utterly human way most of us deal with that truth. Some people, notably the people in my elder community, engage me and introduce me to a form of authenticity that gives me hope for life. I admire that, and I want to be around them, as we struggle to be true to the nature that endowed us with this precious chance.

I know I have wanted to be seen my entire life. The loneliness I feel so deep in my body is a product of that longing. There is no such thing as coming home, for me, without some sense of being known. This is the kind of sustaining food that I crave — being known, not as a therapist, community-builder, lover of art, music, poetry, men and women, but as a holy mystery, a part of the greater whole that lives through us. I crave the puppy pile of sharing recognition of this deeply mysterious existence. Admiring others, knowing them as they pass through, and bravely try to shape this existence, is such a gift, one that goes both ways, one that makes Life all that much more a miracle.

I’m glad I get to share it with you. And, I admire how you have done it.